


someone who makes you quiet

by renaissance



Series: Pynch Week 2016 [7]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7818988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i>Adam likes the way people react to Ronan. It makes him feel unique. No-one deals with Ronan quite the way he can.</i><br/>  </p>
</blockquote><br/>Pynch Week day 7 – Dawn
            </blockquote>





	someone who makes you quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this one is a little late! I wrote it on my phone, partially at a con. Special thanks to Mandy for beta reading, also from her phone, at the same con. I'm also posting this from my phone, so I hope it all looks fine, haha. This will be my last piece for the week (I don't have time to do the free day, haha), and it's been seriously good fun. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented! I hope you've enjoyed these works as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

The coach pulls into Henrietta just as dawn is breaking, a dusting of yellow in the sky and a swirl of dust in the air to remind Adam that he's back in the place where he grew up. He had tried to sleep on the overnight to DC, but as the train jerked its way through the countryside and past any number of towns that could've been Henrietta to the untrained eye, Adam kept waking, kept thinking about going home, and what that really meant.

He hadn’t wanted for company at college. His roommate, his new friends, even his teachers—there was always someone around. And when there wasn't, there was Gansey, Blue, and Henry on Skype, and Ronan on the phone. And Ronan in person, once or twice, when he could get Matthew or a reluctant Declan to look after Opal.

Ronan's here now, waiting just outside the bus terminus. He's leaning on the BMW like everyone on the coach is there to greet him—all six of them; Adam, an old lady with a zimmer frame, a young family of four. The old lady with the zimmer frame is particularly alarmed. Adam likes the way people react to Ronan. It makes him feel unique. No-one deals with Ronan quite the way he can.

“Morning,” Ronan greets him, so casually, as though they last saw each other just a day ago, and not the two months it's been.

Adam never tells Ronan he missed him. He takes Ronan's hand in his and circles his thumb around a bony edge of Ronan's wrist. “How early did you get up to drive here?”

“Not as early as you,” Ronan says.

Standing on his toes, Adam kisses Ronan, just briefly. (He's not that much taller. But Adam doesn't mind it.) “I mean, have you been waiting long?”

Ronan shrugs, which means, yes, he has, but he's not about to admit to it.

“Whatever,” Adam says, amused, “let's go.”

There's a strange disconnect to it—this is Adam's hometown, but there's no home for him, not really. He couldn't go back to his parents’—wouldn't want to—and the apartment above St. Agnes’ has probably been rented out to someone else by now.

He's going to stay at the Barns. Ronan's home.

Right now, the passenger seat of the BMW feels more home than the Barns does. Adam is used to this—sitting here with Ronan’s music blaring, breaking every speed limit they pass. Today Ronan is respectful, probably because it's so early in the morning; he has the radio on, tuned to an AM station. Their muted soundtrack is a panel discussion about drought measures. It's so mundane.

“You had breakfast?” Ronan asks.

Adam hums. “Sorta. I managed to get some chips from a vending machine at DC. Nothing was open.”

“I'll make something,” Ronan says. He's become adept at being self-reliant, cooking with things he's grown himself and milk from his cows. The last time he visited Adam, he brought a tray of homemade fudge. Adam's friends had decided they didn't mind his scary boyfriend so much after that.

The drive is slow, too. They pass St. Agnes’, and Adam lets out a sigh before he can stop himself.

“Nostalgic already?” Ronan jokes.

“I obviously don't miss it,” Adam says. Even his college dorm is bigger than that apartment. “It just feels weird being here, that's all.”

Ronan shrugs. “No great loss.”

“Right,” Adam says. He doesn't think he'd be entirely welcome in a church, anyway—the Bible says Adam and Eve, not Adam and Ronan.

St. Agnes’ is a dot in the distance as they drive on, accelerating.

By the time Henrietta is behind them, dawn has dissolved into day and there's a soft yellow sun in the summer sky. Adam relaxes outside the town—after all, he hadn't wanted to go back there. He'd wanted to leave forever and put this part of his life firmly behind him, relegate it to an uncomfortable memory and let it fade. The Barns is a compromise, close enough to Henrietta for Ronan to have his roots planted in the soil, but far enough that Adam doesn't feel like he's home, not really. And the Barns has never felt like anywhere else. It's an island adrift in the wrong ocean.

“I'm surprised you didn't bring Opal with you,” Adam says.

Ronan frowns. “She's not a baby. I can leave her alone for an hour or two. How the hell do you think I go shopping?”

“Sure,” Adam says. “I've missed her.”

“Missed anything else?”

Adam lets out a laugh, turning to look at Ronan instead of out the window. “You're so transparent,” he says. “Do you think I _didn't_ miss you?”

“I don't think about it,” Ronan says—which is so obviously a lie that Adam laughs again. Ronan doesn't dignify him with a response, and they sit in silence for the next stretch of road.

(They don't have awkward silences—every quiet moment is an understanding.)

Eventually, Ronan says, “You don't have to act like you're happy about being back here.”

Adam sighs. “I know. Give me a bit of time to adjust.”

He waits for Ronan to ask how long, or make some joke, but it never comes. Adam lets another silence pass, another understanding. He lets this thing between them stretch out and fill the space from one side of the gear shift to the other, until it drowns out the radio, the hum of the engine.

Adam's arrival at the Barns is a subdued affair. The cows are there to welcome him, but Opal's inside with the TV on, and the sound comes out damped. The sun is full in the sky now, but it seems to disperse here, scattered and running from some force that tells it to hold back, just here, just now.

“Welcome back,” Ronan says.

No, it's not an arrival—it's a return.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment! You can find me on tumblr @memordes or twitter @_memorde.


End file.
